Sal and Gabi Fix the Universe

by Carlos Hernandez

  2. No point in dying over a subpar hand pie. Mami, when Viva, made the best empanadas. Better to have loved and lost the best empanadas in the world than try to re-create the past by eating garbage ones now. It’d be like Papi smoking his bad cigars just for the sake of smoking them.

  Yet there I was, booking it toward Ms. Reál’s empanadas, using my plate as a pretend steering wheel while making NASCAR noises. Why, you ask?

  Simple: Her empanadas smelled like Mami’s.

  In fact, they smelled so much like Mami’s that, for a second, it was as if she had never died; as if everything had returned to the way it should have been. As I filled my lungs with the aroma of Ms. Reál’s fresh fried hand pies, the feeling of Mami’s presence came over me once more. She’d gone away when Papi had turned on the machine, remember? Now she had returned, as heavy as the deepest breath I could take, and so full of love for me that I felt like I’d grown a second heart.

  That’s an empanada worth eating.

  Or two. I presented my plate to Ms. Reál like Oliver Twist and said, “Two empanadas, please.”

  “Besos primero,” she said, then bent over and gave me an air kiss on each side of my face. She held my shoulders and took a good long look at me. That gave me the chance to take a good long look back. The first thing her appearance told me was that she was the opposite of moody. She had exactly one mood, and that mood was I love you. Makeup looked natural on her, even though she wore it parrot-bright. Barefoot and sweatless, she had the easy authority, the 1950s hairdo, and the palazzo pants that I associate with Miami mamas.

  But there was one unusual thing about the way she was dressed today. She had on a T-shirt, like the kind Gabi always wore: green, with a message in white letters on the front. It was just one word: EMPANADA-D.

  “You’re a Gabi dad now, too?” I asked.

  “Mijo, I’m the original Gabi dad! I had to train all these other zánganos how to do it!”

  “What’s a ‘zángano’?” asked Cari-Dad, seated at the nearest picnic bench, eating arroz con gris.

  Lightning Dad swallowed a bite of empanada quickly so he could answer. “It’s a no-good, lazy, shiftless, do-nothing scoundrel of the highest order.”

  “It me,” said Grizzly Dad-ums. He stared at me the whole time while he slowly put an entire empanada in his mouth and started chewing. That was his way of saying hi.

  “Now, Sal,” said Ms. Reál, focusing my attention back on her, “it’s my understanding that empanadas aren’t exactly health food for diabetics. Is that true?”

  Oh, my friends, the urge to lie was strong. I said nothing for a few seconds, trying to think of a way to answer her that would still score me empanadas.

  “That’s true,” said American Stepmom, coming up from behind me, putting an arm around my shoulder. “And Sal has been doing really well with his levels, ever since he had his incident a few weeks ago. We don’t want to mess with success, right, Sal?” She gave me an encouraging squeeze.

  That squeeze deflated me like a broken rubber ducky that, once squished, would stay squished forever. “Right, Mom.” I exhaled.

  “Well,” said Ms. Reál, moving over to the pizza oven and grabbing a paddle off a hook in the brickwork, “it’s a good thing that I made a special empanada just for you, then!” She scooped up two empanadas and swung the paddle around to me.

  These were baked empanadas, not fried. The crusts looked different, both from each other and from the ones fresh from the fryer, resting on a draining rack. One crust looked paler, despite the dark brown bubbles on its surface. The other looked as uniformly orange brown as carrot cake.

  “You said you made ‘a’ special empanada,” I said. “But there are two here.”

  “The other one is mi-ine!” said Daditarian, marching over from the table, Dada-ist right behind him. “It’s a very special empanada I made just for you. You’ve never had anything like it!”

  “It’s made of bugs, isn’t it?” I asked.

  “Bugs?” asked Papi, looking up from his papers. He was not only a picky eater, but he was picky about what anybody ate in front of him, too.

  “The crust is cricket flour and vegan cheddar!” said Daditarian. “Personally, I think it tastes better than a boring traditional crust.”

  “It’s very…unique,” said Ms. Reál.

  Lol.

  Dada-ist flipped to a new page in his sketchbook and took out a black pencil with no eraser, as if whatever he wanted to draw would be happening very shortly. “Diles con qué la rellenaste,” Dada-ist nudged Daditarian.

  But before he could tell me, Gabi, who came up behind me with Yasmany and Aventura in tow, beat him to the punch. “It’s worms.”

  “Technically,” Dad: The Final Frontier corrected her, “mopane worms are caterpillars.”

  “Caterpillars?” asked Yasmany.

  “Caterpillars!” said Aventura, living up to her name.

  A good magician will often use patter to make sure the entire audience knows exactly what is going on at every step of the trick. “So, in short, you are trying to feed me caterpillars wrapped up in cricket dough.”

  “Cricket-and-vegan-cheese dough!” Daditarian enthusiastically reiterated.

  “I don’t get it,” said Papi. “Why would you tell him what’s in it before he bit into it? You just ruined the trick.”

  Daditarian looked at Papi as if he were wearing a striped shirt with plaid pants. “It’s not a trick, Dr. Vidón. Bugs are the future of food.”

  “Don’t be closed-minded, Gustavo,” said American Stepmom. “Crickets and caterpillars are all protein. They’re excellent substitutes for making a diabetic-friendly empanada.”

  “Yeah, Papi,” I said.

  It was a little hard for everyone to understand me, though, because my mouth was full of baked insects.

  I did my best imitation of Grizzly Dad’ums and put as much of the bug-panada in my mouth as I could fit. I’d only gotten half of it in, but I bit down just as vigorously as he had. Mostly what I tasted was tomato sauce, garlic, cheddar cheese, and crunchiness. There were some chewy bits. They felt on my teeth like prunes, though not sweet. Maybe a touch earthy? All told, not bad, not bad. Yet this wasn’t Mami’s empanada by any stretch of the imagination.

  But the disgusted face Papi made as I chewed at him made it one of the more enjoyable eating experiences in recent memory.

  Got a big round of applause for my performance. Since the day I’d met them all, it seemed like the Reáls were always clapping whenever I ate in front of them. But hey, applause is applause. I took two bows.

  And then I took the other empanada in hand, the one Ms. Reál had made. “Almond flour,” she explained. “I’ve never cooked with it before, so I just tried filling it with a traditional picadillo. If you don’t like it, mijo, you don’t have…to…finish…it.…”

  Chacho, I’d devoured that empanada before she’d finished that sentence. Beef and green olive and pimiento and garlic and onion. It was so moist. The crust wasn’t as pliant—the almond flour made for a harder shell—but the slight nuttiness was so good with the picadillo, and it didn’t fall apart on me the way some empanadas can.

  “May I have another?” I asked, even while I gobbled up the rest of the crickets and mopane worms. “See? I ate all my bugs!”

  I’d never witnessed the birth of a new star. But the way Ms. Reál glowed when I asked for more empanadas, I kind of felt like I had.

  WE HAD A HALF hour of everyone eating everything, cleaning our plates so thoroughly we practically washed the dishes with our tongues. I had three more of Ms. Reál’s empanadas—even better than the first one, as she figured out little tricks to working with almond flour between batches—a bowl of salad (because the padres made me), one forkful of rice and beans, then a Vesuvius of just black beans (because, holy hiccups, they were so good; like, the reason nature invented Cuban spices and chorizo), and then two forkfuls of yucca. The padres thought I should maybe only have one, but I bargained hard. I s
wear, if they ever come up with a cure for diabetes, I’m gonna celebrate at the Reál house with a pot of garlicky yucca all to myself. Y’all can get your own.

  I had a great time with the dads, as usual. They’ve always got a lot going on. They passed Iggy around like the conch in Lord of the Flies—whoever was holding him got to talk.

  Dad: The Final Frontier could have gone on all night about the progress the team was making with the remembranation machine. Papi gently took Iggy out of her hands and passed him on before she revealed any secrets. Cari-Dad was leaving for El Salvador in six weeks with Doctors Without Borders, and Grizzly Dad’ums was going with her because, as he put it, someone has to be the comic relief. Lightning Dad tried out his latest weatherman dad joke on me (I dreamed I was a muffler last night, and boy, did I wake up exhausted!) to groans of agony—except from Dad: The Final Frontier, who, of course, loves all puns. Daditarian laid out his great vision to make all the Reál houses, big and small, solar-powered in two years’ time. Dada-ist was working on his biggest art project yet: a mobile of orange, white, and green slats hung on wires that, when all the floating pieces aligned just right, would turn into an image of Gandhi, or the country of India, or some random, interesting mix of the two. Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman!, who was self-conscious about his English (even though it was very good) was getting a lot of work these days playing Thanos at birthday parties and bar and bat mitzvahs. Hey, he had the build, and not everybody looks good when they’re painted purple. You’ve got to work with what you got.

  And Ms. Reál? “I’ve had some things at home I’ve needed to take care of,” she said as she tickled Iggy. Then she and Gabi exchanged smiles. They were up to something.

  Which is why Ms. Reál immediately changed the subject. She handed Iggy off to Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman! and used a fork to bang on the side of her glass tumbler of Coco Rico. Everyone stopped talking to listen.

  “Mi gente, mi familia, seres humanos adorados,” she said, “the time has come to get to work. We have tonight some very special guests.” She gestured to the “kids’ table,” where Aventura, Gabi, Yasmany, and I were sitting, all of us so stuffed with empanadas, we were basically human empanadas. “And they need our help. Gabi, could you tell us more?”

  Gabi stood. “A-thank you, Mama. Esteemed family, and friends who are also family, we hope you will assist us in reimagining Rompenoche.”

  “That’s the parent-teacher conference thing that’s happening next week, right?” asked Cari-Dad. Dada-ist nodded to her.

  “Why does it need ‘reimagining’?” asked Daditarian.

  “’Cause it sucks,” said Aventura. She didn’t sound sad about it; just stating facts.

  “Oh, Ave,” said Ms. Reál, who never liked it when people were too hard on themselves. “I’m sure it’s not as bad as you think it is.”

  “Naw, she right,” said Yasmany, yet another empanada going into his gut. “It sucks plátano verde.”

  Aventura smacked his arm. His shoulders hopped as he laughed. “Why when Sal tell you it sucks, he gets a medal, but I tell you an’ I get hit?”

  “I didn’t say it sucked green plantain,” I said. “Crossed a line, chacho.”

  “Bu-u-u-u-t-t,” said Gabi, reclaiming her time, “we know how to fix it! It’s Mrs. Vidón’s idea. Instead of just doing a boring old play, we’re going to do”—she took a breath and almost sang out the rest of the sentence—“interactive site-specific theater.”

  “Interactive whoosie-whatsit now?” asked Lightning Dad.

  “Sounds complicated,” said Ms. Reál.

  “Oh, no,” American Stepmom chimed in. “It’s just a fancy name. But the idea is simplicity itself. Who here likes haunted houses?”

  Everybody put their hand up except Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman! and Dad: The Final Frontier. Ms. Reál leaned over to Dada-dada-dada-dada Dadman! and explained what a haunted house was in his ear. “Ah!” he said, and then he put up his hand.

  But not Dad: The Final Frontier. “They scare me,” she said simply.

  “Fair enough,” said American Stepmom. “But we don’t want to make a scary haunted house. We want to turn Rompenoche into a Wonderland house.”

  “A ‘Casa de Maravillas,’” Aventura added. “We want to make our version of Wonderland more Miami.”

  “Let me see if I’ve got this right,” said Lightning Dad, who was listening and imagining and trying to make sense of all this as fast as he could. “You want to make a haunted house, except it’s not haunted, but more like the audience walked through the looking glass and ended up in Wonderland, except it’s more like Miami?”

  “Bingo,” said American Stepmom. “If you take away the scary part of a haunted house, what you’re left with is a very interesting way to tell a story.”

  “Picture this,” said Gabi, spreading her arms out in front of her. “Instead of watching a play, where you sit in a chair for three hours looking at a stage, you walk around Culeco. Every room tells a different part of the story. One room will be the tea party. Another will be the chess game. Another will be the trial of the Knave of Hearts.”

  “The actors will be in the rooms, waiting,” said Aventura. “They start the scene when people come in and end it when they leave.”

  American Stepmom added, “And it’s a little different every time they act out the scene, because we want the actors to mess with the audience, joke around with them. You know, improvise.”

  “Like the actors at Renaissance faires,” I added. “They’re always in character, but they make up their lines to fit the situation.”

  “Tell them about the Spanish,” Yasmany nudged Aventura.

  “You tell them,” she countered. “It was your idea.”

  I thought maybe Yasmany would be nervous, talking in front of all the Reáls and Vidóns. He didn’t seem like the type of kid who would excel at public speaking. But I’d forgotten that he’d been friends with Gabi since second grade. These folks knew him. And since my padres had practically adopted him last night, he felt comfortable around them, too. In fact, I realized, no one there who could call both the Reáls and the Vidóns “family” more easily than he could.

  And, oh yeah. He’d put on a heck of a show at my locker today. I kept underestimating Yasmany. I’d really have to watch that.

  He stood up and opened his arms as wide as a rapper, more than ready to take credit for his idea. “Okay,” he started, “so, best part, we gonna keep it real, see. Ain’t nobody heard of no book some English dude wrote like thirty years ago. What?”

  He was wondering why people were falling off their picnic benches or burying their faces in their hands when he said that nobody had ever heard of Lewis Carroll.

  “Aight, all y’all gerbils, but don’t matter, we keeping it real. Everybody bringing in stuff from they lives. They gonna add it to they costumes. And however they talk, that’s how they gonna talk. No more fake-potato Queen of England cacaseca. They can leave that garbage in they tights. This show puttin’ the i in ‘Miami’ twice, yo. Any questions?”

  We all looked at each other two for seconds. Then everyone’s hand went up. I mean, even American Stepmom’s. And Aventura’s. And mine.

  “Aw, man,” said Yasmany. “Why y’all ain’t listen?”

  Luckily, Gabi was there to translate Yasman-ese into English. “This is supposed to be Rompenoche, but we weren’t doing anything to ‘break’ the Alice books open. Now we are. It’s not going to be ‘Alice’ in ‘Wonderland.’ It’s ‘Alicia’ in ‘el pais de las maravillas.’”

  Aventura started counting off on her fingers. “It’s gonna have Cuban and American and Nicaraguan and African American and Haitian and Honduran and Dominican and Columbian and all the other backgrounds people come from as part of the show.”

  “And the Tekesta,” added Gabi. “We want to honor the Native Americans who were the original Miamians.”

  “We’re going to blend them in with the costumes, the sets, the props, and the acting,” said Aventura
. “Whatever your background is, you get to add it to the show.”

  “So it’s a multicultural Alice,” said Papi.

  “Reimagined as site-specific interactive theater,” added Dad: The Final Frontier. “The site is Culeco, and the actors are going to interact with the audience.”

  “I’m in,” said Grizzly Dad’ums.

  “Sounds super fun,” said Cari-Dad, playing horsey with Iggy.

  “Sounds like a ton of work,” said Daditarian. “And you want to pull this off in a week?”

  “We’ve been working on the show since August,” Aventura answered. “So we’re going to use what we already have. We have a script—we just have to break it up so people can perform little pieces of it in their rooms. We have costumes—”

  “Great costumes,” I chimed in.

  “Oh yeah, the best,” Yasmany added. He gave me an annoyed look. I think he didn’t like me complimenting Aventura, as if I were in competition with him or something. Which: (1) NO. (2) If it were a competition, he would have already lost. Get good, chacho.

  Grizzly Dad’ums stared at both of us suspiciously. Dude always seemed to be on the lookout for romance. He pointed two fingers at his eyes, and then at Yasmany and me.

  Aventura, taking a note from Gabi, reclaimed the floor. “We have costumes, so now we just need everyone to add a little something to them from their own backgrounds. This was supposed to be tech week. We have sets, we have props, we have everything we need for a performance, basically.”

  “So, then,” asked Dada-ist, who had been sketching something diligently for a few minutes now and didn’t stop drawing as he spoke, “what do you want us for, if you have everything you need?”

  “We need more of everything,” said Gabi. “We need six Alicia costumes, twelve White Rabbits, fifteen Mad Hatters, two dozen Bill the Lizards, and who-knows-how-many Cheshire Cats.”

  “Since,” American Stepmom clarified, “we’re going to have so many scenes going on at the same time in different rooms, we need multiple people playing the same parts.”

  “I made one costume for every main character,” added Aventura. “Now we have to make a lot more copies. Plus, we have to improve the ones I already did, make them more Miami-looking.”